At first, he would show up at the bar around nine or so and stay until the bright lights came on, always drinking only one beer. Then one day a package arrived in the mail. It was the plaque with Josh’s name on it, the one he won the night of the accident. Shortly after that, Henry began stopping in the bar earlier and earlier until finally he started showing up at three, then two, and one o’clock in the afternoon. One beer would turn into ten and before long he was drunk, staggering out the door at closing time and collapsing unconscious onto the seat, and sometimes even in the bed of his truck. He would often wake up in the morning having vomited on himself sometime during the night. He’d unfold himself from wherever he was, drive home, be there long enough to clean himself up, and then head back into town.

Henry’s decline was as swift as it was complete. In less than six months, not only was he drinking heavily, having switched from beer to whiskey, but he also allowed his hay crop, one of the best he’d ever had, go to seed and rot in the field. He also started selling off his livestock to pay the mortgage on the ranch. Each month he’d sell off just enough to pay the mortgage and have enough left over for drinking money, until he ran out of livestock to sell. At that point, he simply stopped paying the mortgage.

Not surprisingly, the ranch went into foreclosure that winter, and the following spring, almost a year to the day from the accident, Henry sat on the steps of the tack room and watched as everything he owned was auctioned off to the highest bidder. A couple of his long-time friends, Leon, George Meyer, Abe Custus and a few others, all got together and bought his old ranch truck, his rifle and pistol, his bridle and saddle, saddle bags, saddle pad and blanket, and then turned around and gave them all back to him. Henry was truly thankful at the gesture, although none of the items really meant all that much to him—with the exception of his saddle.

The saddle had been his father’s, and his father’s before him and his father’s before him. Now that Annie and Josh were gone, it was really the only possession he had that meant anything to him at all, and even though he had been prepared to see it go, he found he was happy to be able to keep it. Henry left the ranch that day, his life now strewn about the seat of the old truck, and never went back.

He began a life of drifting and picking up day work and odd jobs throughout the West. Almost immediately, however, his drinking intensified. He’d go to bed drunk, then get up in the morning and start drinking again. It was his only defense against the nightmares he experienced at night, and the flashbacks during the day. In fact, the drinking never did get rid of the nightmares and flashbacks. It only dulled them. Most of the time he was able to hide his day drinking from those he worked with, usually only taking enough to keep the edge off. But there was nothing he could do to hide his night drinking, and more than one job slipped through his hands because of it.